The Bush administration has come under intense and sustained international criticism for its treatment of prisoners held at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba.

The military has been using the site to house hundreds of detainees, many believed to have been picked up off battlefields in Afghanistan.

When the detention centre was established in 2002, President Bush ordered that detainees be treated "humanely, and to the extent appropriate and consistent with military necessity, in a manner consistent with the principles of Geneva".

His spokesman Tony Snow said on Tuesday that the Pentagon directive did not represent a change: "It is not really a reversal of policy. Humane treatment has always been the standard."

Court steps in

At the end of June, the Supreme Court ruled 5-3 that the Bush administration did not by itself have the authority to order that the detainees be tried by military commission.

COURT RULING

We conclude that the military commission convened to try Hamdan lacks power to proceed